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Ben Halpern
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What are the hardest parts about working from home?

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ilonacodes profile image
Ilona Codes

Avoiding the kitchen area 😅

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

So much this

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Sung M. Kim

You summed it up much better than my reply!~ 😁

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anwar_nairi profile image
Anwar • Edited

I feel, mentally thinking your day is over is a bit harder than when you are at home and don't commute or change space.

Too much temptations for pushing your day a little bit because "hey, I don't commute 2 hours a day anymore, I could show my team I am committed to my work".

Plot twist: never do that, just take care of your family in this hard time. The world will not collapse in an hour, it's ok to quit when the day is over (If it wasn't obvious, I am self coaching my self now 😅).

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Ridhwana Khan

Remembering what day it is 😅especially if you mostly asynchronous and have very few calendar meetings. Routine has also been a difficult thing to master when I'm working from home but I feel like I've gotten much better at it!

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Jan Kosutnik

In last two weeks I thought it was Thursday, when it was Friday and the other way around. This messes up my weekend plans 🙈😁

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Shannon Crabill

This! Usually, I have some time reference to compare to when my partner goes into work, but he's home and now time has no meaning.

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Ben Halpern

I hear you! 🤪

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Michael Tharrington

Haha, cheers to that. ☕️

I drink waaaaay too much coffee when working from home!

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Stefanos Kouroupis

In my previous Job I worked from home for 6 months. This is nothing like it. Working from home is absolutely fine...not much of a challenge.

  • The challenge now is that you have to work with your kids.
  • You need to remember to stop working, because there isn't much else to do.
  • I can't be bothered to even watch tv anymore.
  • I can't be bothered to code off work anymore (feel too exhausted)
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Shauna Gordon

This!

A lot of people are equating this to remote work under normal circumstances. It's really not! There are too many other things that make this not-normal when it comes to working remotely. Some of the things are similar and some of the remote working adaptations can work, but even veteran remoters will tell you there's a huge difference here.

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evey

Indeed, Homeoffice and Homeschooling at the same time is a real challange !
I do homeoffice since 2013 at i was always happy with it. For homeschooling with kids, we agreed with my chef to do "best effort", so that i can take time with my kids.

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Ferit 🌟🕌
  • Focus
  • Kids
  • Sitting properly
  • Disconnect from work :D
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Sung M. Kim

Sitting properly

This is especially true as there isn't anyone watching you...

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Ferit 🌟🕌

Yeah, I don't have a proper chair to work from home, so sitting properly is even more of a challenge.

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_hs_ profile image
HS

Comminication. People call me on the phone, video calls break, voice call break, I have to wait for someone to see the message on Slack (or someone waits for me)...

In the office you just shout hey man do this or that or this is broken and thats it couple of seconds.

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Hassan Schroeder

"In the office you just shout hey man " ... <- EXACTLY why I utterly despise working onsite in an office -- total productivity killer.

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_hs_ profile image
HS

More like a joke. I really did hope no one actually shouts anything. You approach te person if he's free and discuss right there a meter away able to point things on monitor in a second. But man did you have poor experience if people shouted

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Hassan Schroeder

Literal "shouting" or not, interruptions are the curse of office work. And sorry, there's no way for someone else to know if I'm "free" to have my thought process disrupted.

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_hs_ profile image
HS

Well here's a little more on that one. I get calls on cell phone, slack "spams", emails etc from those same people. And in the office they at least ask when I'm free to talk to them which makes it less disturbing. Same goes for me I don't need to know or care when is someone "free", if it's urget it's more important than your thinking. You cant work with other people without communication and that will have some occurrences of interuption in bad moment. It's frustrating and it's called job for that reason. I have lesss usefulness for a great dev who can't handle job than average dev that has amazing communication skills. 95% of the companies are poor developed software which gets the job done NOW. It requires people to maintain it and understand each other as work with each other. And yes it requires poor tech stack as it requires people that will bug you all the time. That 5% silicone valley is reserved for people more lucky than myself and my colleagues whether it be they're borne smarter or something else. And those numbers are random but if we did analysis I bet i wouldn't be far off. People need to do their jobs and others need to build and maintain software for it. I worked for 12 teams/companies so far in 7 year experience. I don't need to point out what bad software I saw and how bad I ended up to be. But people need paychecks and that's about the same in other industry.

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hassan_schroeder profile image
Hassan Schroeder

I confess I don't understand most of that, but I'm certainly not downplaying the value of good communication. I am saying that I find online communication channels far more manageable and less intrusive.

Also, people can legitimately disagree on what's "urgent" and what's not 😀

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_hs_ profile image
HS

Great point, people do have different opinion on "urgent", you're absolutely right. I have to point out for anyone that uses "interupt my thinking" that this happens way more in other industries and some of IT, but most of IT in western world have benefit of being treated differently. It's important for me to point it out to show some understanding to people that suffer it each day yet have no option but keep on working to provide for their family as they have no other job options. I do understand that someone is more important not to interupt as their role makes more impact on the product but still I do like reminding people of others.

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Hassan Schroeder

If nothing else, I hope the pandemic-driven focus on remote work results in everyone being accorded the respect -- regardless of role -- to manage their personal communication preferences and time allocation.

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Jamena McInteer

Staying connected to co-workers on a human, non-work level. I struggle with this already if I haven't known someone for a while, and taking away an avenue of connecting with someone (face to face) makes it harder.

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Oleg Aleksandrov
  1. Wake up at same time every day
  2. Doing sports
  3. Not reading news about economical and coronavirus situation every hour
  4. Not drinking too much coffee
  5. To be absolutely polite with everyone
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Ben Lovy

Duelling conference calls in a small apartment.